Notes of a backpacker: Hostel living

If I ever get nostalgic for the hostel days, here is what I will have to do:

I'll need to recruit a few people. First I'll need someone to sleep in my room and snore their head off. Secondly I'll need someone to come into the room, truly wankered at 3am and turn the light on and make an obscene amount of noise until they get their shit together and pass out. Then I'll need someone to start zipping and unzipping bags while having a field day with plastic bags at 6am. For good measure, I'll get someone to shake my bed so it feels like I'm back in the top bunk while someone tosses and turns all night on the bunk below.

When it comes to the bathroom, I'll tie a plastic bag over the showerhead and poke a hole or two in it to ensure minimal water pressure while someone else flushes the toilet to make sure the water temperature is never steady. Sometimes I'll turn the water on and off every 20 seconds to remember those stop start showers.

I've had my fair share of horror stories. There was that time we booked an uber cheap bus ticket to Munich and then went to book accommodation only to find that everything below 50 euro a night was booked out. Until we found a place called The Tent. Our option was a 100 person "dorm". And by dorm, they meant huge tent.
We were given 3 blankets each. By the time we went to bed, we got another one. After an hour of tossing and turning and shivering, I noticed that Tanya was awake on the bunk below, so I hung my head over and asked how opposed she was to spooning. So, that happened and we managed to stay warm sharing body heat and 5 blankets.

"Haha, remember that time we had to spoon to not get hypothermia in Munich?" You'd think that one spooning story would be enough for one Eurotrip. Alas... this was not the case. In fact, our next stop, Amsterdam, saw us in a similar situation. Upon check in, we were told that we'd be sharing the same bed due to a booking f*ck up on their behalf. "Cool, we've been put in a double for the night," we thought. No no no. "You'll have to share a mattress on a bunk bed." We didnt need to demand a discount. It was given to us before we had to kick up a fuss.
Only good thing about this situation is that we were moved from a 10 bed dorm to a 4 bed dorm and were given the discount on a Saturday night - the most expensive night to stay in Amsterdam. Then the next night we were given a private room instead of the 10 bed dorm.

The place we stayed in Paris was a joke. There was one toilet per level and nowhere to wash your hands. And the French wonder why they're pinned as dirty...
The shower was definitely the kind you wear your flip flops while you're showering. And 2 minutes into the shower, the sensor light would turn off and the only way to get it back on was to step all the way out of the shower and hover by the door until it turned back on.
Not only that, the included breakfast was a croissant from a vending machine that you were given tokens for. On the second day I came down to the lobby and asked for breakfast tokens and he told me that breakfast was over. Its from a vending machine, you tosser!!

But you always manage to find some awesome place to break up the shitholes you find. I've had my fair share of crap hostels, but I've also had some pretty amazing experiences in them as well.
A booking error on our behalf had us staying in two seperate hostels when we were in San Sebastian. By fluke, our second one was in the same building block, so after checkout at the first one we just walked down a level. They werent expecting us so early and no one who actually worked there was around, so two Canadian girls let us in and showed us around and gave us the tour. Turned out we were in their room too.
The place was like staying at a mates place when the parents were away. Except the parents were there from time to time. We'd all drink together, someone would cook for us, we'd go on outings together and we'd all hang out in the lounge room together recovering.

I love coming across a hostel that will go out of their way to make sure you're having a good time. It makes your time in a place so much better. I've actually probably only had that happen a bunch of times though. Krakow, San Sebastian, Lisbon, Barcelona, Sarajevo. So enough to count on one hand, yet I have stayed at 20 hostels.

Wait... cant forget Pecs, Hungary. One of my favourite experiences. Offered tea on arrival at a self sustaining farm that was like staying at the grandparents house. We were the only people staying there and I got to milk a goat. Sometimes you need to mix it up a bit.

My most recent experience is up there with the best as well. After my dilemma with a 5 hour train delay caused by a landmine in Bosnia, I was ready to spend the next day in bed and being bitter about public transport. But I was lightly woken by the hostel owner who wanted to know if I was okay. After I'd explained what had happened, I had a shower and she took me out to breakfast! Then she took me and two others staying at the hostel to the Tunnel Museum and told her about her experience with the Bosnian War.
To top it all off, she sent me off with a couple of gifts to say thank you for staying at the hostel. She made my stay in Bosnia all that much better by being so lovely.